Wurl’s Brand Awareness Flywheel for CTV Advertising

In the evolving landscape of Connected TV (CTV), capturing and maintaining viewer attention is more crucial than ever. Since the launch of our BrandDiscovery product, we have been discussing the need for a handy explanatory aid for marketers.

This led us to develop the Wurl Brand Awareness Flywheel, a simple way to understand the dynamic strategy marketers can use to harness viewer attention effectively and sustainably.

It combines all our learnings, from the theoretical to the practical, into one easy-to-reference explainer. We’ve found it invaluable to explain the benefits of emotion targeting on brand affinity.

What does the Flywheel do?

The flywheel concept, popularized by Jim Collins in his book Good to Great, is designed to show how companies succeed through persistent effort and strategic consistency. According to Collins, the flywheel effect starts with small initiatives that, when applied consistently over time, contribute to a greater and greater buildup of energy, leading to breakthrough results.

Wurl’s Brand Awareness Flywheel captures CTV’s unique characteristics, such as its communal, engaging, and content-rich environment. This strategic model provides a roadmap to enhance viewer engagement through a series of interconnected stages that cultivate and amplify positive brand perceptions. By aligning ad content with viewer context and preferences, marketers who embrace the flywheel foster a cycle of attention and engagement that not only boosts immediate ad effectiveness but also builds long-term brand loyalty and resonance.

1. Brand Perception

Brand perception sets the foundation of our flywheel. It encompasses all viewers’ pre-existing views, emotions, and loyalties toward a brand. Each interaction with the brand — especially those that are contextually congruent and positively received — helps to reinforce and enhance this perception.

2. Priming

The priming phase involves preparing the viewer for engagement through high-quality, resonant content. This content sets the emotional tone and readies the audience for a seamless transition to brand messaging. Priming is crucial as it ensures the viewer is in a receptive state, making them more open to the messages that follow.

Priming is a powerful subconscious influence on our behavior and has been deeply studied since Vance Packard’s 1957 book “The Hidden Persuaders.” It leverages subtle cues within the environment, especially powerful emotional ones, to activate related mental representations, enhancing the accessibility of certain behaviors. For instance, food delivery companies can sync ad content with viewer emotions related to hunger — driving measurable increases in activation.

3. Emotional Resonance

At the heart of the flywheel is emotional resonance. Emotionally congruent advertisements are designed to connect on a deeper emotional level, bridging the gap between viewer content engagement and brand interaction. This resonance is achieved by aligning the ad’s message, tone, and values with those of the content and viewer preferences, ensuring a smooth and natural viewer experience.

This seamless integration is facilitated by emotion-based targeting tools like BrandDiscovery, which scores content and ads for emotional resonance, enhancing viewer engagement and campaign effectiveness. For instance, Monks used BrandDiscovery to emotionally align ads with content, significantly boosting brand awareness and purchase intent.

4. Positive Attention

Positive attention is the goal of the previous phases, where the ad not only captures but also maintains the viewer’s attention. This phase is critical as it solidifies the viewer’s engagement with the brand, reinforcing the brand’s appeal through effective and memorable ad experiences. Positive attention leads to higher engagement rates and encourages viewers to interact more deeply with the brand.

According to the AVCA report on contextual targeting, the integration of AI in contextual advertising has revolutionized viewer engagement metrics significantly:

• Reduced ad misses: AI-enabled contextual ads have shown a remarkable decrease in being overlooked, with a report of 4 times fewer ads missed compared to other targeting methods. This highlights the effectiveness of AI in ensuring ads are seen and engaged with by the audience.
• Increased engagement from the start: When AI-enabled contextual targeting is employed, ads viewed from the beginning increase by 22%. This suggests that viewers are more likely to stay engaged with ads that are contextually relevant to the content they are consuming, minimizing the likelihood of turning away at the start of an ad break.
• Enhanced overall attention: Viewers exposed to AI-enabled contextual ads showed a 15% increase in total ad attention. This increase indicates that viewers are less distracted and more absorbed in ads that are aligned contextually with the content, enhancing the overall impact of the advertisement.

5. Halo Effect

Successful advertising experiences create a halo effect, where positive feelings from the advertisement extend to the brand as a whole. This effect enhances brand equity and influences future interactions and perceptions across various platforms and touchpoints, leading to increased brand loyalty and advocacy.

For example, by aligning the emotional tone of their ads with the viewer’s current content, Monks not only captured but also held viewer attention, leading to significant increases in key performance indicators: a 7x lift in aided brand awareness, a 4x increase in brand favorability, and a 2x lift in purchase intent. These metrics demonstrate the power of effective emotional resonance in advertising—ads that resonate on a deeper emotional level can profoundly impact brand perception and loyalty, turning casual viewers into brand advocates.

In summary, by systematically applying the Wurl Brand Awareness Flywheel, brands can not only meet the challenges of modern CTV advertising — such as advertising in relevant contexts at scale — but also turn them into opportunities for growth and viewer connection.

For more information on how you can make emotion targeting work for your brand, check out our BrandDiscovery product or talk to an expert.